


Sober

by Viridian5



Category: Hard Core Logo
Genre: Angst, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-09-07
Updated: 1999-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:49:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy puts it all out in the open for Joe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sober

**Author's Note:**

> _Major_ spoilers for the end of _Hard Core Logo_. If you haven't seen it and don't want to be spoiled, don't read this.
> 
> This movie haunted me, and this is not happy fic. Thanks to Te for read-through. She showed me the movie without telling me a certain something first...

Fuck you, Joe.

Shit, look at that smile. Should have known you'd take it the opposite of how I meant it, you prick. Well, don't. Because I hate you, and right now "I hate you" doesn't mean "I love you," like it sometimes did from you. Even though I did that too. Love you, not play with your head. Not if I could help it. That was your game.

Shit, I'm not sure what I mean.

Somebody once said that all we owe the dead is truth, so I'm finally going to tell you what I think of you now that you can't distract me or yell at me or punch me anymore. You have no idea how fucking angry I am right now, but you will soon.

You were an asshole, and proud of it. Figured that made you authentic punk or something. You seemed to think that naming yourself "Dick" gave you license. "Hey, I let you know from the very beginning that I was a dick. Makes it your fault you expected different from me." Like hell.

I loved you, but a lot of the time I didn't like you very much. I think you preferred it that way. Well, I'll never know now, will I?

You were a fucking coward. Yeah, you. Scared of success, scared of thinking about the future, scared of having a future, scared of getting close to people, scared people might start to think you were a sellout, scared of growing up, scared of me. Yeah, of me, because "Joe Dick never needed nobody" but you needed me, and you hated that.

I didn't even figure out what that brawl was about until the police came to say that you blew your brains out. You've whaled on me worse than that before, and I just thought you were pissed off for your own reasons or blowing off steam or some shit.

Or you could have just been saying in your own fucked-up way that you loved me. Insults, punching, spitting seemed to be the only way you could do that. And I didn't mind all that much, because at least --

Oh fuck, we _are_ that trailer trash husband and wife. "I can't stay with you no more, Joe. You can't provide for me, and you can't love me the way I need to be loved." You'd probably just say, "Shut up, bitch, before I slap ya." Pathetic.

So I was slow on the uptake, high on adrenaline from the performance and the fight, but finding out that you killed yourself and that the film crew skipped out with no warning told me all I needed to know.

I was going to tell you about the Jenifur thing, Joe, in my own time, just not right before the last show. But Bruce and those bastards told you first, didn't they, even after I asked them not to. Probably did it in that fucking condescending and confrontational way they used to talk to you through the whole tour. I could just see it: "Hey, Joe, what do you think about Billy leaving you to play with Jenifur? What, he didn't tell you? What a surprise."

Didn't it make you suspicious at all? I mean, a documentary about a band that gets along great all the time and a tour that goes off without a hitch is fucking boring. Shit, I should have realized they would squeal the moment they got their hands on a timebomb like that bit of news.

As soon as that stupid kid talked about it in front of them, I should have gone to you. It wouldn't have been as good as what I'd planned, but it would have been better than Bruce and them telling you and making me out to be a weasel.

But I know I screwed up, and this isn't about me. This is about you and how you never wanted to admit you screwed up. Because everything is about Joe Dick, ain't it?

I guess yanking your chain got them the best finale they could have asked for, fucking "closure" beyond a documentary's wildest dreams. How much more punk rock can you get than a bullet to the brain? They probably have it on film; you always were big on the grand gesture.

I want to see it. I want to know what you said. It's not like you can tell me.

If they keep it in the finished film I'll have to see if I can sue their asses off. For something. Bastards called the police and ran off after they'd just about put the gun in your hand, then taped you pulling the trigger. Hunting them all down, cutting off their cocks, and feeding it to 'em would be fun, yeah, but I don't think I can pull it off. Attacking their wallets actually seems to hurt them more anyway.

We're just a paycheck to them all, meat in the grinder, whores in the stable. Eventually we start pimping _ourselves_ off...

You could have just asked me after they told you, you prick. Fuck, how many things at how many different times would have been different, _better_, if you'd just asked me? We could have talked... Yeah, Joe Dick actually talking instead of posturing and shooting the shit. Hell would freeze over first. All those things you didn't like to say... "I love you" was for when I gave you what you wanted. "I'm sorry" was for never.

But asking seemed too pussy for you, right? Same way you never accepted what people freely gave you. You didn't trust it unless you _took_ it yourself. Just like that night...

_Now_ you're asking what I thought of that? Yeah, because I just said you never ask anything and because there's not a fucking thing either of us can do about it now no matter what I say. What you really want me to tell you is what a stud you are. "Once you've had Dick, you'll never go back," or some shit. Actually, I don't remember it very well. How does that sound, Mr. Dick? Of course I don't remember everything you did, asshole. I was barely conscious and too fucked up to fight you off.

Maybe I could have fought harder, but... Some part of me thought you would calm down, get gentler, that you'd make me enjoy it, but you were an animal with me. Is that what seeing me just about helpless does to you, Joe?

It hurt so bad, some of it felt good, it wasn't supposed to be like that. I would have -- If you just -- Fuck it. It's too late.

Did it turn you on to hear me say no and ask you to stop? Over and over again? Being able to overpower me must have been some kick for you too, you prick.

I don't -- I don't want to know what you were thinking while you raped me. I don't. I want to know what you thought about it when you sobered up. Did you have a justification as soon as you came to, or did you actually feel sorry you did it for one moment? Sorry you hurt me. Fuck if I'll ever know, because you didn't even admit it happened, let alone tell me you were sorry for it.

The hell of it was that I still loved you even after that. Still love you now. You're one bad drug, Joe. With you, everything made sense: all the self-destructiveness and abuse. "No future" seemed like the only way. Then I sober up and realize that I killed a goat and drank its blood, or that my best friend raped me. Or that time has happened, and I'm an aging, chain-smoking alcoholic who doesn't have any money to his name. But none of that made you less addictive.

I keep trying not to feel guilty about your death. I think you want me to feel guilty. I think nothing would make you happier than the thought of me putting a gun to my own head and joining you. It's romantic in that self-destructive, punk way that was the only romance you ever liked. But it wasn't my fault. I wanted to stay with you, but you kept making it impossible. It wasn't just the fucking rape. It was the way you fucked up every chance we ever had of making it as a band.

You saw success as selling out, but it's just survival. It's realizing that you're getting older and can't survive just on cigarettes and booze. It's realizing that you can't do this forever and need to have plans, because no one else will take care of you, that's for sure. Your punk romance is fine as long as you don't survive to get old. Well, through no fault of our own we missed the "die young" part.

I want to live. I never shared your kind of ideals. It was always the music for me.

Did it kill you to think of me leaving? You seemed... not happy, but resigned to it at the start of the tour. I expected you to razz the hell out of me when the Jenifur thing fell through in the middle. You didn't, though. Because you thought you had me helpless again, right? I had nowhere else to go. You could have me, and on your own terms. In the gutter together but looking at the stars.

Stop looking at me like that. Okay, truth. Fucked up as it is, part of me liked it.

Finding out that your Bucky Haight's stumps story was a lie made me want to beat the shit out of you, but even there I knew why you did it. To get me back. It was flattering in a way. And you were as kind with me as you could let yourself be. Heads leaning together, working on music... I ignored all the personal and money problems that made it impossible before, and all the new ones the tour and your lying started. I tried not to think that coming back to you had eaten John and Pipe alive, leaving nothing, which was why you were dumping them now. I told myself that being with you would all be tourbus games, performance highs, music, you spinning me stories about people. Just the two of us. I told myself that together we could freeze time and disappear when we needed to. I told myself that maybe you'd matured a bit, maybe I could get you to the point where you'd do more than just allow me to touch you once in a while, and we could --

I knew better the whole time. It's just that when you have no choice and fighting gets you nowhere, the best you can do is try to lie back and enjoy what you can.

When I got that second shot at Jenifur, I felt like a rat, but I signed on. Yeah, the band is corporate, but professionalism isn't so bad when it means that you don't have to worry about the venue closing down just before you get there or the audience not showing up or having all the money you made stolen out of your room by the whores your lead singer brought in. Sometimes I want to bang the kids' heads against the wall, but corrupting them is fun. It's a living, and it's a living playing music.

They all use you, but at least "selling out" means you get to use them back. I would have tried to get you something if I didn't know that you wouldn't want it.

But even Jenifur is going to be about you, at least for the first few weeks. Interviewers aren't gonna leave me alone about this. That probably makes you happy, you prick.

I knew we had to end; I just didn't want it to be this way.

After we broke up the band years back, every now and then I'd still think about you and wonder who you were pissing off at that moment. It made me happy to think you were out there somewhere being you. And you robbed me of that, like you robbed me of you, you asshole, you fucking coward. If you were really here right now I'd --

Yeah.

Well, I have the rest of my life to try to get over you, and it's about time I got on with it. Again.

Our trip is over. I think it's about time I started my own for real.

See you later, Joe.

 

### End


End file.
